Saving the materialists

[Federica]

Perhaps you should simply stop trying to fix me, especially with remedies such as this:

"Another angle is to consider Levin's research that you have summarized recently, and which, I don't think anyone can doubt, has led and will continue to lead to enormously practical results. As we know, Levin still functionally conceives of the nested intelligences of the living body as assembled from the bottom-up. Indeed, instead of stimulating introspective observation of our human-scale cognitive activity, Levin's research suggests that, the more we learn about the cognitive capacities of elemental agencies, the more true advancement we will see in biomedicine. He will say, "seeing this advancement is believing in the bio-hacking approach". Can the intellect argue with this? Can the intellect put the results of Anthroposophical medicine, which prepares its therapies and remedies through sacrificial inner development, on a scale with Levin's biohacking results and say the former clearly outweighs the latter? If we think about this enough, it reveals why there is no hope in the mere presentation of Anthroposophical therapies and remedies to stimulate inner development (which, to Cleric's point, doesn't mean we should stop pursuing, producing, and disseminating such remedies as part of our broader spiritual tasks)",

with the expectation that I shall be enthusiastic (as you say I should be) about the deepening in self-knowledge you are giving me.

Perhaps I should have elaborated on that more, because I think it is a very strong point that speaks directly to the 'seeing is believing' hope and how it can not only fail to stimulate, but backfire in an infernal direction. If the intellect further conditions its expectations on the value of immediate outer successes, then it will eventually feel like biohacking is far superior to any inner development. But I am not sure if you understood why it was introduced, or if you even want to understand at this point.

It's old story. I disagree with your discussion hacking methods, and also with your very strong point here. But I am not sure it would be beneficial or useful to elaborate more at this point, sadly.

[AshvinP]

It's old story. I disagree with your discussion hacking methods, and also with your very strong point here. But I am not sure it would be beneficial or useful to elaborate more at this point, sadly.

Good, then at least we're finally clear that I am not simply saying things you already know and agree with and trying to 'checkmate' you for no apparent reason. If you disagree with my 'strong point', then we have significantly different orientations to the 'seeing is believing' approach and its value. It reminds me of Dostoevsky's story of the Inquisitor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor

The tale is told by Ivan with brief interruptive questions by Alyosha. In the tale, Christ returns to Earth in Seville at the time of the Inquisition. He performs a number of miracles (echoing miracles from the Gospels). The people recognize Him and adore Him at the Seville Cathedral, but He is arrested by Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burnt to death the next day.

Cleric once wrote something similar:

viewtopic.php?p=14479&hilit=crucify#p14479

FB awaits for something to happen in the world, something which should unveil the truth in a more perfect way but he doesn't even conceive as a possibility that penetrating the depth behind thinking, which leads to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, may have anything to do with it. Actually he expects new kind of knowledge, which will explain higher cognition as distorted visions. It's the same thing Eugene does. He said that he believes there's spirit time-depth behind our "I"/eye but he doesn't believe that it is anywhere near of the character that SS speaks of. So what do we do? Nothing. We just sit and wait in our abstract bubble for the next messiah to come and rescue us. Well, the messiah has already done what was needed - it's now our part. And even if he were to come again, those who wait for him will most likely crucify him when they hear a teaching that is hard to bear.

And as we know, Christ himself said, "blessed are those who have believed without seeing." (John 20:29). All of this points to a very characteristic tendency of the intellectual soul that we need to remain vigilant for. This 'seeing is believing' topic came up in the broader context of 'preliminary steps' that the intellect can take to warm itself up to the introspective approach (the presentation of medical remedies only being one example of such steps). We need to be clear that a perceptual encounter with Christ himself would not be sufficient to stimulate inner development, and could perhaps even fuel resentment and a desire to crucify that which invites such development. Rather, we need a foundation of 'belief' (not blind, but introspectively won) before our conceptions and perceptions can attain an inwardly stimulating effect.

Just to be clear, I am not saying we should keep all outer applications of spiritual science to ourselves and refrain from publishing them, presenting them, and so on. Obviously, that is no solution. It's only that we should not expect this to be a pedagogical tool that can work in the absence of phenomenological-introspective study and exercises. We shouldn't expect the bridge to cognitive reorientation to come from this direction, in which we essentially buy into the game that secular culture plays to 'prove' what approaches work and don't work, what is worth pursuing and what isn't. As Cleric said, we need to be flexible and versatile in our speech, also making peace with the fact that most of it won't bear fruit in a single incarnation. That lack of immediate fruit shouldn't lead us to diminish the phenomenological-introspective approach.

[Federica]

The “seeing is believing” was part of a description of what Steiner implied at various occasions speaking of "rational medicine", not my recommendation for a pedagogical approach to Anthroposophy. And I disagree with your very strong point not in the sense that I consider seeing is believing a path in itself, but that the intellect can argue with the statement "seeing Levins (future) advancements is believing in the biohacking approach", just as it can argue with any other form of technology, that is any endeavors that attempt and pretend to squeeze human development through the material plane only, with exclusively sensory purposes. The intellect's means here are what Steiner called "practical thinking", in association with what he called a natural and healthy "sense for truth". Of course this would not be stimulated for the many, but there is hope - as Steiner also thought, otherwise he would not have expressed himself as he did - that the efficiency and rationality of the anthroposophical practical applications, for example medicine, may elicit a larger interest in Anthroposophy and its introspective practices. I may even say, it seems to me that the purpose of a denomination such as "spiritual science" in addition to "Anthroposophy" finds one of its justifications in that. Certainly there would be many materialists who would remain completely insensitive to those signals, but there is no question of promoting infernal goals, or buying into the game of secular culture, because one points to the rationality (I am not picking this word randomly) behind the effectiveness of anthroposophical applications. I also think that, if one day you end up reading those lectures (the ones you said you are not familiar with) you will probably get a more concrete sense of what I have been trying to report on that basis.

This said, since you repeat once again what we have agreed on countless times already: "It's only that we should not expect this to be a pedagogical tool that can work in the absence of phenomenological-introspective study and exercises", as if it were the bone of contention, I will have to say once again: yes, it wouldn't teach anything in absence of introspection. But it would put Anthroposophy on the map, for those who are ready for it, so that some of them may eventually come to know it, study it, and initiate the necessary introspective work.

[AshvinP]

The “seeing is believing” was part of a description of what Steiner implied at various occasions speaking of "rational medicine", not my recommendation for a pedagogical approach to Anthroposophy. And I disagree with your very strong point not in the sense that I consider seeing is believing a path in itself, but that the intellect can argue with the statement "seeing Levins (future) advancements is believing in the biohacking approach", just as it can argue with any other form of technology, that is any endeavors that attempt and pretend to squeeze human development through the material plane only, with exclusively sensory purposes. The intellect's means here are what Steiner called "practical thinking", in association with what he called a natural and healthy "sense for truth". Of course this would not be stimulated for the many, but there is hope - as Steiner also thought, otherwise he would not have expressed himself as he did - that the efficiency and rationality of the anthroposophical practical applications, for example medicine, may elicit a larger interest in Anthroposophy and its introspective practices. I may even say, it seems to me that the purpose of a denomination such as "spiritual science" in addition to "Anthroposophy" finds one of its justifications in that. Certainly there would be many materialists who would remain completely insensitive to those signals, but there is no question of promoting infernal goals, or buying into the game of secular culture, because one points to the rationality (I am not picking this word randomly) behind the effectiveness of anthroposophical applications. I also think that, if one day you end up reading those lectures (the ones you said you are not familiar with) you will probably get a more concrete sense of what I have been trying to report on that basis.

This said, since you repeat once again what we have agreed on countless times already: "It's only that we should not expect this to be a pedagogical tool that can work in the absence of phenomenological-introspective study and exercises", as if it were the bone of contention, I will have to say once again: yes, it wouldn't teach anything in absence of introspection. But it would put Anthroposophy on the map, for those who are ready for it, so that some of them may eventually come to know it, study it, and initiate the necessary introspective work.

Let's imagine that ML devised a new technology based on research such as described in this video, which effectively 'cured' many forms of cancer. Of course, that would be widely published and disseminated to the academics, business people, general public, etc. At the same time, we can imagine that Anthroposophical researchers developed a homeopathic remedy to treat cancer (maybe they already have), based on indications such as those given here, and this is widely disseminated as well.

Viscum is the specific for carcinoma. There is nothing to be done about it. Of course, because basically every disease is treated differently, since every organism is in a certain condition, the remedies are sometimes supported by the addition of something else. It is possible that he has cured with mistletoe. He does not use it as an injection. In that case, it is possible that something else would be needed as an addition. But when Viscum is used as an injection, it is the specific remedy. You just have to pay attention to the differences in the individual case, whether you have the mistletoe from an oak tree, a cherry tree or another tree, such as an apple tree. The essential thing is that the use of mistletoe juice really depends on the fact that we actually have to enhance its effect. I don't know if you have seen that we are not seeking to use Viscum in such a simple way, but that we need an apparatus to do so. First we bring the mistletoe juices into a vertical movement, and then we let a horizontally rotating movement penetrate them. The aim is to make the mistletoe juice drip and to circulate it in drops, combining it again with mistletoe juice in horizontal circles, so that a special structure is created right down to the smallest circles. This is actually only the healing effect of the viscum, which arises. Of course, it is an effective remedy in itself; but the absolutely specific remedy only arises in this complicated way. The only thing that can be said is that when the disease occurs in a complicated way, quendel is used. Because the pure carcinoma, which is a self-contained disease, is not like influenza or flu, for example, where all sorts of things can be added. It is a self-contained disease that is treated with a self-contained remedy.

Now the average intellect confronts these different treatments with its rational evaluation. On what basis, through its rational movements alone, can it conclude that ML's treatment is trying to "squeeze human development through the material plane only, with exclusively sensory purposes", while the Anthroposophical treatment is of a fundamentally different, supersensible order? Would the concept of "squeezing human development through the material plane only" even carry any significant meaning for an intellect that has no intimate familiarity with its supersensible nature and thus nothing to compare the material technology with? I am interested in how you would imagine a rational evaluation of these differing approaches proceeding, what the logical process would look like that can differentiate one from the other.

I realize that you mention, "The intellect's means here are what Steiner called "practical thinking", in association with what he called a natural and healthy "sense for truth"."

We have discussed before how this 'practical thinking' presupposes a certain degree of introspective development. It is not the default state of the philosophical-scientific intellect in our times (even less so than Steiner's time), which cannot help but move impatiently, prejudicially, according to modern technological pressures and habits, etc. I am wondering if you agree with that or disagree, because I am still unsure. My current sense is that you are placing 'practical thinking' a stage lower than living thinking cultivated by introspective exercises, but it is also a stage above the default intellectual state and, if so, the question is, how did it get there?

I would also note that Anthroposophy has already been 'on the map' for many decades now, insofar as its research and applications have been publicly available. Of course, it has become more widely available to rational intellectual evaluation than ever in our time. Why has this not already stimulated the initiation of introspective development among broader spheres of intellectual souls?

[Federica]

Ashvin, the kind of scenario you have constructed has little to do with what we have discussed so far, from my perspective. Surely, you are right: if the average person randomly opens the ‘newspaper’, reads the news of Levin’s cancer treatment (let’s imagine he’ll develop one) then on the next page sees something along the lines of the (deplorable) wikipedia entry on anthroposophical medicine and viscum treatment, they’d be most likely impressed by the former and unimpressed, to say the least, by the latter.

As we have always said, the problem in addressing complex questions is often in how the question itself is formed. Here the question you pose has the problem of hypothesizing a sort of competitive contest between two treatments for a given illness, presented side by side, out of the blue. This is not a relevant scenario for considering the question of how spreading studies and discussions around the effects of anthroposophical applications may catalyze attention to Anthroposophy as a spiritual path. That would most likely not happen in your scenario, which moreover speaks of ”average intellect”. I have already clarified that the average intellect would remain insensitive to the material signals of anthroposophical applications.

In order to appreciate, even only intellectually, any anthroposophical treatment - which is never a homeopathic treatment by the way - the intellect needs first to have gained some initial understanding of anthroposophical medicine in general, for example of the intellectual kind found in textbooks and manuals, or through live discussions, courses, workshops, university studies and dissertations (Steiner suggested plenty of precise material research topic areas for doctorands of medicine to work on), forums, substacks, or in other ways. To the extent that such possibilities exist and are made available more and more broadly, Anthroposophy and its applications are set on the map and become discoverable in a substantial and rich way. From there, as said, those intellects who are ready for it, may find it compelling to consider some concrete applications more closely, and perhaps even sense (in our epoch of TOE) that a unified approach, foundational to a comprehensive spectrum of applications, may speak to their feeling for truth.

A feeling for truth doesn’t need to be exclusively logical, just like the intellect does not need to rely exclusively on logic. Nevertheless, the logical and practical intellectual thinker still finds precise satisfaction in what Steiner lays out in order to arrive at the introduction of a viscum therapy for carcinoma, for example. The lectures are disseminated with rational trains of thoughts that can be followed by the intellect. Although the intellect alone couldn’t have produced those logical pathways by itself, it can absolutely recognize them, and resonate with them. And when the intellect honestly realizes precisely that - its own inability to materialize such grandiose, perfectly logical ensembles, which it can admire and appreciate but not create - that's when the possibility to feel a deeper interest for the truth behind the whole approach may be kindled. In this ways, the intellect can become interested in Anthroposophy as a spiritual path.

Of course, the exact step-by-step logical paths the intellect may follow would be different case-by-case, depending on the specific topic addressed. In many cases, the lines of thought would have something to do with recognizing the composition and organization of a wide and deep perfect tableau of reciprocal causes and effects, in which every element is connected resonantly with everything else, by degrees, multi-polarities, and correspondences. But this is only one aspect. Much more could be said to illustrate how the intellect can be, not only impressed and fascinated, but also logically compelled, so as to feel drawn to the truth of the entirety of man and the Cosmos. Steiner continually speaks of the importance of rational lines of thought in medical science:


“As you will observe, this path you are following represents a perfectly rational train of thought, and what has been found through super-sensible vision will have to be confirmed by external and sense-perceptible facts, for the humanity of the present and future.”

“All that we apply is applied from outside to the processes peculiar to man, and we must therefore form a rational concept of the nature of this connection between man and the external process.”

“And it is necessary to recognise this primary tendency of the human organism before any rational antidote to tuberculosis can be discovered.”

“The rational path of investigation is the clear comprehension of man's organic tendency to perform and produce, somewhere, the exact opposite to the happenings of external nature.”
...


Another thing the intellect can achieve in the direction of practical thinking (before it begins spiritual training) is to strive for unprejudiced thinking. This also comprises the possibility of uncovering the superstitious, contradictory, and illogical elements typical of materialistic thinking. For sure, even Levin is not entirely free from these habits, and an intellectual unprejudiced thinking can strive to become sensitive to these truths, if it cares to cultivate a feeling for them, thus becoming coaxial with the flow of life, to use Clerics expression. Granted, all these are not easy and casual wins, but hope is definitely there, that they may lead to anthroposophical introspective practices.


PS: Yes, the concept of "squeezing human development through the material plane only" would hardly be intelligible to any intellects unfamiliar with their supersensible nature, but I wrote it to your attention, not theirs.

PS: I don’t think we can say that Anthroposophy and its applications are already on the map in any significant way. It's all scarcely known, both in the philosophical, spiritual, religious environments, and in the applied ones, apart from vague references to Waldorf education, and perhaps some other disconnected bits and pieces, often marked with the suspicious label of "occultism".

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, the kind of scenario you have constructed has little to do with what we have discussed so far, from my perspective. Surely, you are right: if the average person randomly opens the ‘newspaper’, reads the news of Levin’s cancer treatment (let’s imagine he’ll develop one) then on the next page sees something along the lines of the (deplorable) wikipedia entry on anthroposophical medicine and viscum treatment, they’d be most likely impressed by the former and unimpressed, to say the least, by the latter.

As we have always said, the problem in addressing complex questions is often in how the question itself is formed. Here the question you pose has the problem of hypothesizing a sort of competitive contest between two treatments for a given illness, presented side by side, out of the blue. This is not a relevant scenario for considering the question of how spreading studies and discussions around the effects of anthroposophical applications may catalyze attention to Anthroposophy as a spiritual path. That would most likely not happen in your scenario, which moreover speaks of ”average intellect”. I have already clarified that the average intellect would remain insensitive to the material signals of anthroposophical applications.

In order to appreciate, even only intellectually, any anthroposophical treatment - which is never a homeopathic treatment by the way - the intellect needs first to have gained some initial understanding of anthroposophical medicine in general, for example of the intellectual kind found in textbooks and manuals, or through live discussions, courses, workshops, university studies and dissertations (Steiner suggested plenty of precise material research topic areas for doctorands of medicine to work on), forums, substacks, or in other ways. To the extent that such possibilities exist and are made available more and more broadly, Anthroposophy and its applications are set on the map and become discoverable in a substantial and rich way. From there, as said, those intellects who are ready for it, may find it compelling to consider some concrete applications more closely, and perhaps even sense (in our epoch of TOE) that a unified approach, foundational to a comprehensive spectrum of applications, may speak to their feeling for truth.

A feeling for truth doesn’t need to be exclusively logical, just like the intellect does not need to rely exclusively on logic. Nevertheless, the logical and practical intellectual thinker still finds precise satisfaction in what Steiner lays out in order to arrive at the introduction of a viscum therapy for carcinoma, for example. The lectures are disseminated with rational trains of thoughts that can be followed by the intellect. Although the intellect alone couldn’t have produced those logical pathways by itself, it can absolutely recognize them, and resonate with them. And when the intellect honestly realizes precisely that - its own inability to materialize such grandiose, perfectly logical ensembles, which it can admire and appreciate but not create - that's when the possibility to feel a deeper interest for the truth behind the whole approach may be kindled. In this ways, the intellect can become interested in Anthroposophy as a spiritual path.

Of course, the exact step-by-step logical paths the intellect may follow would be different case-by-case, depending on the specific topic addressed. In many cases, the lines of thought would have something to do with recognizing the composition and organization of a wide and deep perfect tableau of reciprocal causes and effects, in which every element is connected resonantly with everything else, by degrees, multi-polarities, and correspondences. But this is only one aspect. Much more could be said to illustrate how the intellect can be, not only impressed and fascinated, but also logically compelled, so as to feel drawn to the truth of the entirety of man and the Cosmos. Steiner continually speaks of the importance of rational lines of thought in medical science:


“As you will observe, this path you are following represents a perfectly rational train of thought, and what has been found through super-sensible vision will have to be confirmed by external and sense-perceptible facts, for the humanity of the present and future.”

“All that we apply is applied from outside to the processes peculiar to man, and we must therefore form a rational concept of the nature of this connection between man and the external process.”

“And it is necessary to recognise this primary tendency of the human organism before any rational antidote to tuberculosis can be discovered.”

“The rational path of investigation is the clear comprehension of man's organic tendency to perform and produce, somewhere, the exact opposite to the happenings of external nature.”
...


Another thing the intellect can achieve in the direction of practical thinking (before it begins spiritual training) is to strive for unprejudiced thinking. This also comprises the possibility of uncovering the superstitious, contradictory, and illogical elements typical of materialistic thinking. For sure, even Levin is not entirely free from these habits, and an intellectual unprejudiced thinking can strive to become sensitive to these truths, if it cares to cultivate a feeling for them, thus becoming coaxial with the flow of life, to use Clerics expression. Granted, all these are not easy and casual wins, but hope is definitely there, that they may lead to anthroposophical introspective practices.

Thanks for this elaboration, Federica. As it has often happened in this discussion, I feel that you are essentially describing introspective practices but calling them something else, something 'pre-introspective'. When we speak about cultivating a feeling for inner truths (through logical reasoning), becoming 'coaxial with the flow of life', that presupposes introspective development that has reoriented its perspective on the perceptual-conceptual content it encounters, leveraging that content as symbols for intimate inner processes. Which is fine, if at the end of the day, we are simply speaking about the same type of approach in different ways, with different terms. But I am also given some pause when statements such as this are introduced,

"Much more could be said to illustrate how the intellect can be, not only impressed and fascinated, but also logically compelled, so as to feel drawn to the truth of the entirety of man and the Cosmos"


Logical compulsion is the antithesis of spiritual freedom. The former applies in the domain of computational thinking, discursive intellectual reasoning according to fixed premises acting as constraints on our mental transformations, but not in the domain of organic inner movements. The latter always leaves us with degrees of freedom to doubt the assembled contents of our thinking and thus the impetus to continually rekindle those contents through inner activity. It leaves us in a continual state of expanding our soul forces and virtues to bridge the gap between where we are and where we are seeking to be in our understanding. Logical compulsion, on the other hand, entirely negates and obstructs that process, instead only cultivating the illusion of 'truth' and 'insight'.

I wonder if you can place yourself in the position of reading these medical lectures, for example, before any significant exploration of PoF and the essays/posts on this forum that refine the phenomenological approach, or any meditative exercises? Perhaps you even tried that before and can report on the experience. Can you imagine "striving for unprejudiced thinking" in the absence of that exploration? I am sure you would agree, the intellect cannot simply say to itself, "I am now going to strive for practical thinking and dismantle my prejudices". That is why I asked, how does the intellect get to this stage without any prior introspective study-exercises?

[Federica]

When I say that the intellect can be logically compelled by Steiner’s illustrations I mean logically engaged. I don’t mean that logic becomes a compulsion. I was referring to the particular engagement of rationality and logic that Steiner endeavored to stimulate in the student (as I tried to evoke with the short quotes above). These logically traceable pathways that explain why a certain remedy matches particular symptomatic pictures, are present everywhere in the lectures - why plant and not mineral (say) why roots and not flowers, why injections and not baths, what are the man-nature correspondences that allow outer and inner forces to connect, what countereffects can be anticipated and why, etcetera.

So I agree that logical compulsion is opposite to spiritual freedom. What I mean is that logical and rational trains of thought are helpful, and even necessary. When not compulsive, but simply recognized as the perceptible images of a highly organized and organizing spiritual activity, they become integral to the development of medical intuition. Then they are not seen as a set of rules to find remedies, but experienced as progressive sequences of small revelations of the cosmic order. This can assist intimate understanding of the unique pathological situation at hand. Does this require systematically practiced introspection? I think that spiritual training is a moral requirement for practicing anthroposophical doctors, otherwise the necessary medical intuition and union with the individual pathological circumstances would be lacking, and therapy would become more like half computational and half guesswork.

However, I also think that exposure to these illustrations can be stimulating in the right direction for intellects who have not yet encountered Anthroposophy as a spiritual path. Because the intellect is capable of renouncing the type of ‘understanding’ that goes through logical compulsion, to let artistic impulses, and moral impulses, find their way in that understanding - in other words, renouncing its own desire "to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances”. This can happen when the intellect intuits the order which must lie behind the visible, through the pictures emerging from Steiner’s rational illustrations.

Personally, I only began reading the medical lectures this year, I didn’t attempt it before. But I can absolutely imagine striving for unprejudiced thinking without spiritual training, from the forces of the intellect. To your question: I am sure you would agree, the intellect cannot simply say to itself, "I am now going to strive for practical thinking and dismantle my prejudices", I reply: the prejudices in question are the ones of the materialistic mind, not necessarily the ones of the intellectual human cognitive mode. Granted, in many cases these would fully overlap, but not necessarily. Again, there is a problem in the question: you equate intellect and materialism. Whoever has oriented one’s mind towards an exclusively physicalist understanding of the world will indeed be blind to reductionism, and to all other superstitious, contradictory, and illogical elements typical of materialistic thinking, like confused assessments of causes and effects, for another example. In these cases you would be right. But the intellect is not necessarily that. It is sense-based cognition, brain cognition, that cohabits with other soul-spiritual qualities, and may remain open to self-transcending possibilities, to becoming coaxial with the truth and beauty of life. Not only that the superstitions of reductionism are logically detectable and within direct reach for the intellect, but also that the intellect can receive the images, the signals, through perceptual cognition, (as described above), of the existence of an expanded plane of activity, that may compel, or induce to, a rewiring of cogntive attemps. The intellect has the means to seize these cues, if the karmic conditions, and the specific human organization's conditions, allow. Thereby, the intellect can find the patience and strength to resist the impulsion to compute and streamline everything, and call it an 'understanding’.

[AshvinP]

However, I also think that exposure to these illustrations can be stimulating in the right direction for intellects who have not yet encountered Anthroposophy as a spiritual path. Because the intellect is capable of renouncing the type of ‘understanding’ that goes through logical compulsion, to let artistic impulses, and moral impulses, find their way in that understanding - in other words, renouncing its own desire "to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances”. This can happen when the intellect intuits the order which must lie behind the visible, through the pictures emerging from Steiner’s rational illustrations.

Personally, I only began reading the medical lectures this year, I didn’t attempt it before. But I can absolutely imagine striving for unprejudiced thinking without spiritual training, from the forces of the intellect. To your question: I am sure you would agree, the intellect cannot simply say to itself, "I am now going to strive for practical thinking and dismantle my prejudices", I reply: the prejudices in question are the ones of the materialistic mind, not necessarily the ones of the intellectual human cognitive mode. Granted, in many cases these would fully overlap, but not necessarily. Again, there is a problem in the question: you equate intellect and materialism. Whoever has oriented one’s mind towards an exclusively physicalist understanding of the world will indeed be blind to reductionism, and to all other superstitious, contradictory, and illogical elements typical of materialistic thinking, like confused assessments of causes and effects, for another example. In these cases you would be right. But the intellect is not necessarily that. It is sense-based cognition, brain cognition, that cohabits with other soul-spiritual qualities, and may remain open to self-transcending possibilities, to becoming coaxial with the truth and beauty of life. Not only that the superstitions of reductionism are logically detectable and within direct reach for the intellect, but also that the intellect can receive the images, the signals, through perceptual cognition, (as described above), of the existence of an expanded plane of activity, that may compel, or induce to, a rewiring of cogntive attemps. The intellect has the means to seize these cues, if the karmic conditions, and the specific human organization's conditions, allow. Thereby, the intellect can find the patience and strength to resist the impulsion to compute and streamline everything, and call it an 'understanding’.

Thanks again for a lengthy elaboration, Federica, this helps further distill the points of discussion. We are aligned in that 'logical engagement' is a better way to characterize the interaction with the symbolic pictures of spiritual science than 'logical compulsion', but we are still at odds on the above. It is my sense that the rational intellect at large, i.e., as the intellectual soul has generally evolved in the modern age, and the materialist-reductionist intellect, are practically identical in terms of their characteristic tendencies. Put another way, the materialism-reductionism is not so much in the content of thinking (the philosophy, theory, model, etc.), but in the perspective from which the intellect approaches its meaningful states and their metamorphoses. Without introspective reorientation of that perspective, functional reductionism inevitably prevails.

There are many ways in which we could approach this question. In a certain sense, we need look no further than ML, who, based on his deeper intuitions and scientifically expressed ideas, has 'transcended' the materialist-reductionist understanding. As Cleric recently put it, he is "closest to the viable direction in which the intellect can become coaxial with the flow of existence." Yet, at the same time, "this [intellectual reductionism] is not easy to resist even by ML, who presently gives priority to the intellectual modeling as it is believed more likely to yield actionable results... This still gives a distinct bottom-up flavor to ML's mindset."

Now, if we agree that, among modern intellectual thinkers, ML's intellect is one of the most likely to "renounce its desire to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances”, then the question becomes, what is stopping that renunciation? He can act as a limit case, in that sense. I guess the first question before even that one is, would you describe ML's intellect as one that has overcome the 'prejudices of the materialistic mind'? If not, what exactly would such an intellect look like? I think we need to try and be as concrete about this as possible, because otherwise we are just speculating into the void about hypothetical intellects that could hypothetically overcome materialistic prejudices without introspective preparation, even though we ourselves have no experience with that and don't know any other souls who have such experience either.

[Federica]

Thanks for your reply, Ashvin. I will come back to it a little further on.

[Federica]

It is my sense that the rational intellect at large, i.e., as the intellectual soul has generally evolved in the modern age, and the materialist-reductionist intellect, are practically identical in terms of their characteristic tendencies. Put another way, the materialism-reductionism is not so much in the content of thinking (the philosophy, theory, model, etc.), but in the perspective from which the intellect approaches its meaningful states and their metamorphoses. Without introspective reorientation of that perspective, functional reductionism inevitably prevails.

Ashvin, I don't see the above two ways to put it, as equivalent. I agree with the latter but not with the former. Yes, materialism-reductionism is in the perspective from which the intellect approaches its states (or rather the perspective from which it doesn't approach its states) but the intellectual soul is not only that. The modern intellect encompasses the possibility to give way to the spiritual, otherwise what would "spiritual science" even mean? What sense would it make that Steiner carved out the possibility for the human mind to approach the spirit as science? The overlap between reductionism and the modern rational intellect is not complete. There is an opening in which spiritual science can grow, and it starts from the intellect's ability to give way to what appears to it of unreachable magnitude, extending beyond its scope, and yet reverberating distinguishable meaning within its scope, like a noteworthy trace, or projection, of that higher magnitude. We need look no further than Steiner - how he in public conferences regularly spoke to the audiences' rational intellect, and surely not to their reductionism.

There are many ways in which we could approach this question. In a certain sense, we need look no further than ML, who, based on his deeper intuitions and scientifically expressed ideas, has 'transcended' the materialist-reductionist understanding.

I would say, ML is a less useful example, in this respect. He has not transcended the materialist-reductionist understanding. He has only transcended the materialist-reductionist models. Which is why his mind's flavor is still distinctly bottom-up. And, exactly as you argued above, it's not the model that makes one a reductionist or a non reductionist, but the understanding. As far as I can tell, he's presently not likely to "renounce its desire to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances”, as I elaborated few posts above.

Now, if we agree that, among modern intellectual thinkers, ML's intellect is one of the most likely to "renounce its desire to build a faithful picture of reality out of its own symbolic dances”, then the question becomes, what is stopping that renunciation? He can act as a limit case, in that sense. I guess the first question before even that one is, would you describe ML's intellect as one that has overcome the 'prejudices of the materialistic mind'? If not, what exactly would such an intellect look like?

ML has not overcome the prejudices of the materialistic mind. I think we can reconstruct what the intellect able to overcome it looks like, through the negative picture provided by Steiner when he addresses it. The examples are many, I have this recent lecture in mind, for instance, addressed to an audience new to Anthroposophy. It is an intellect that agrees to be guided. Not dragged, but guided, while it remains active and autonomous in its proper functionalities.